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Former Libyan PM found dead in Danube

KIM LANDERS: Mystery surrounds the death of Libya's former oil minister, Shukri Ghanem, whose body has been found floating in the River Danube in Vienna.

Mr Ghanem defected from Libya last year and had been living in the Austrian capital.

Initial reports suggested that he had died in his apartment, but police later said his body had been found in the river.

Barbara Miller reports.

BARBARA MILLER: Police say Shukri Ghanem's body was found by a passer-by on Sunday morning.

It was floating in the New Danube, a channel of the main river which flows through Vienna.

There are a number of bars and restaurants on the riverbank, and a popular walking and cycling track.

Police say Shukri Ghanem had not been in the water long, and did not appear to be carrying any identification with him, apart from one document which named his company in Vienna.

Austrian television described the circumstances as mysterious.

(Sound of Austrian television report)

A police spokesman said there appeared to be no outward signs on Mr Ghanem's body that he had been attacked before his death.

The spokesman then added that if the former Libyan oil minister had been pushed into the river, the body wouldn't necessarily show any signs of trauma.

Or, he said, Shukri Ghanem may have taken ill and fallen into the river.

The mystery deepened further after reports emerged that earlier in the day a family friend had said Mr Ghanem had died in his apartment near the Danube of natural causes.

Richard Pennell is the al-Tajir lecturer of the history of Islam and the Middle East at the University of Melbourne.

RICHARD PENNELL: Ghanem was such an important figure in the regime, and he knew so much about its inner-workings that people are going to go on speculating and producing rumours one way or the other for a very long time. Because that somehow typifies the nature of that regime and its surviving members, that there was a smoke and mirrors affect about Gaddafi's Libya, that nothing was ever quite certain, nobody quite knew what was going on. And the rumour mill was extraordinary.

BARBARA MILLER: Shukri Ghanem didn't see eye to eye with all the Gaddafi family but he gained the trust of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

He served as prime minister between 2003 and 2006 and oil minister until his defection last year.

SHUKRI GHANEM: I have been, as you know, working in Libya for so many years, believing that we can make a lot of reform from within. Unfortunately, this became not possible.

BARBARA MILLER: Richard Pennell.

RICHARD PENNELL: The story goes that when he asked permission to travel outside the country in order to defect, he said he was going abroad on business. Gaddafi apparently said that he couldn't believe anybody who was so loyal was about to defect.

BARBARA MILLER: Mr Ghanem had strong ties to the Austrian capital, which is home to the offices of OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

There have been rumours that he stashed money in Vienna.

RICHARD PENNELL: Working for the regime was an extraordinarily risky business and people moved in and out of favour. And so anybody sensible would have made sure that they had somewhere to go.

He certainly kept on a flat, an apartment in Vienna, and his daughter continued to live there.

BARBARA MILLER: Austrian authorities are expected to carry out a post-mortem on Shukri Ghanem's body later today. He was 69.